Page 2 of How to Say I Do
His chin dipped down. He pushed his sunglasses to the top of his head, and, finally, he really looked at me. Those red-rimmed eyes of his were blazing, and his fingernails dug into the wood between us. “Yeah,” he whispered. “How about a shot of Tito’s, too?”
His name was Noël, and his story poured out in between his ravenous scarfing of his burger and half of mine. Ihmmedand frowned and said “Bless” and “Lord almighty” in all the right places, picked at a few of the curly fries, and shared a single shot of Tito’s with him.
Twenty hours earlier, Noël had expected his fiancée to say “I do” at the Plaza Hotel in Midtown Manhattan, but instead of seeing her radiant smile smoothly glide down the aisle toward him, Noël heard their wedding planner whisper in his ear that everything was canceled and the wedding was off. He stood in front of their six hundred guests alone, his heart tipping backward, tumbling untethered through space, a million questions soaring through his mind. He’d spent last night pacing ruts in their empty honeymoon suite trying to reach her, needing some kind of explanation for why and what and how.
At two in morning, she’d finally texted back:I’m not in love with you. There’s someone else.
Noël arrived at JFK airport just before six a.m., booked on a 10:10 a.m. flight. He’d started downing vodka and orange juice screwdrivers there, and then kept going on board in first class, chugging tequila sunrises all the way from New York to Dallas, determined to keep his blood alcohol level stratospherically high.
“We’re supposed to be on our honeymoon,” he said around the last bite of my burger. “She’s supposed to be sitting right where you are.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Noël reached for the bottle of Tito’s the bartender had swapped for the Goose. When Noël ordered us each a shot, the bartender had looked at me like I’d waded hip-deep into a rattlesnake nest. I was on my own with Noël.
He poured himself another slug of vodka. “I dodged a bullet, right? I mean, imagine if she told meafterthe wedding that she didn’t love me.” He tried to laugh, but it fell out of him all sharp edged and fraught. “Isn’t this the kinder way to dump someone? Splitbeforeshackling them with any need for a divorce attorney?”
I waved Noël off when he came toward my empty shot glass. “I don’t think getting left is kind at all.”
Noël knocked back his Tito’s. “We were together for eighteen months, and I just keepthinking…” He shook his head. “How long was she seeing someone else? Did it start before or after we got engaged? Whoishe? Andwhy?How—”
“Those questions don’t lead anywhere good,” I told him. “Drink some water.” I nudged my glass of water toward him. “You gotta balance out that vodka before you float away.”
He tried to smile, but it was weak. Still, he listened, and he downed half my water in one long pull.
“Fuck,pleaseget me out of my head. Talk to me, sing to me, anything, I don’t care. Tell me: what the hell areyoudoing here?”
I arched my eyebrows toward our empty plates, the burgers he’d demolished, and the three left-behind fries all lost and lonely. I was taking care of him, clearly, because no one in eighteen hundred miles had stepped up before me.
“Notthis.” Noël wagged his hand between us. “Why you’re talking to me is a fucking mystery, and something I’m certain you’ll regret. No,here, I mean. At the airport. You’re not from Dallas. I know people from Dallas. They’re not likethis.” Another hand wave, sweeping from my boots to my hat. “You’re from… I don’t know, Amarillo or Odessa or something. Someplaceactuallycountry.”
I grinned. “I’m from a good deal farther away than Amarillo or Odessa. I’m from Central Texas, but you’d need a map and a magnifying glass to find the place.”
Noël made a face that saidmakes sense. He was listening to me, and seemed actually interested in what I was saying, which was damn impressive because I’d assumed his thoughts were sloshing around on the roll tide of alcohol filling his veins.
“I’m on my way to my baby brother’s wedding. Liam’s marrying his high school sweetheart. They’ve been together since they were fifteen, and you’ve never seen two people more in love than Liam and Savannah, I promise.”
All too late, I realized what I was saying. My eyes bulged and my lips parted, and I stared at Noël as he closed his eyes, laughing the same laugh a man does when he’s gambled his last dollar and lost. “I’m sorry, Noël—”
“No, don’t worry about it.” Noël wrapped his hand around the long neck of that Tito’s bottle again. This time, he poured a straight line of vodka right into my water glass, filling it up to the tippy-top. “I’m glad to hear other people are happy.” He knocked my glass back, half water, half vodka, all pain. “Happy to hear that other people are getting married,” he croaked.
A boarding call crackled over the airport’s loudspeakers, a disembodied electronic voice calling for all ticketed passengers heading to Cancun to make their way to gate E19 for immediate boarding. That was my flight, but… Well, I could get the next one. It didn’t feel right to leave Noël like this.
He’d heard the boarding call, too, though, and was listening with his head cocked like a dog. He slapped the bar top and shot me a grin. “That’s me.”
“You’regoing to Cancun?”
“Sure am, on my honeymoon.”
“My brother is getting married in Cancun.”
“Well—” Noël tugged out a wad of cash from his pants pocket and flung a handful of hundred-dollar bills onto the bar, way more than two burgers and a plate of fries and ten shots of vodka were worth, even at airport prices. He snatched up the half-empty bottle of Tito’s and said to me, “We better get going.”
He had no bags and no luggage, and he went marching down the terminal with his chin up and his sunglasses in place, swinging that Tito’s like he was a sashaying pirate.
The bartender harrumphed, and two older guys in sport coats and ten-gallons at the far end of the bar raised their bourbons to me, each sporting a sardonic grin that saidgood luck.
I grabbed my duffel and followed Noël.
